How Does Santa Claus Know Whether I Have Been Naughty or Nice

The fact that I am asking this question here and now does not make me unique or especially smart in any way, nor does it make this question original. As a matter of fact, there is no doubt in my mind nor should there be any doubt in yours that this question had been asked by many believers in Santa Claus through the ages and most particularly by those who fear that their behavior may indeed have earned enough demerits to disqualify them from Santa’s list of “Nice.” And if their names are not allowed to appear on Santa’s list of “Nice” and because everyone must be on one of Santa’s list or the other, it must then have been added to his list of “Naughty.”

For those of you who believe in Santa Claus you most likely also believe that:

* Santa Claus and his wife, Mrs. Santa Claus now live in a secret village in northern Finland because they moved out of the North Pole.
* Santa Claus has little helping elves whose names are: Flying Snowball, Professor Tiny, Lookout Fellow, Medic Al, Helpin Hands and Ken Do-It-All who are all the children of Gryla and Leppaludi.
* Santa Claus has flying reindeer whose names are: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer whose nose lights up the night sky for Santa and the other reindeer.
* Santa Claus receives and reads every single letter and postcard which was addressed and delivered to him during the entire year and he files them away in special categories for future action.
* Santa Claus manages and operates a toy-building workshop where he and his helpful little elves custom-build toys for all those on Santa’s list of “Nice.”
* Santa Claus’ sleigh has enough space to contain all the toys for every nice child in the whole world.
* Santa Claus, with his pudgy belly and sack full of toys, is able to go down a narrow chimney without smudging his bright red outfit with its snowy white trim or messing up his long beard.
* Santa Claus delivers toys to millions of children around the world all in the span of a single Christmas Eve night.

If you believe in all that about Santa Claus, you must also believe that he maintains a list of those who were nice during the entire year and another list of all those who were naughty during that same year. And if you believe that Santa Claus maintains a list of “Nice” and another list of “Naughty,” you must also realize that there is a very deliberate reason for Santa Claus to maintain two such lists. And believe me. Santa knows exactly when you had been nice and when you had been naughty. How? Because he is magical and has magical powers, that is how! And when his magical powers run low on their source of energy, Santa Claus relies on his extraordinary instinctual powers, on his extra sensory perceptions, on his healthy gut feelings, on his magic snowflakes, on his wife’s intuition, on his elves’ hunches, on his reindeer’s instincts and last but not least, on Rudolph’s shiny red nose to illuminate truth and to distinguish between nice and naughty.

In one way or another, Santa Claus knows whether you are naughty or nice and it is worth your while to be nice because, in the long run, only the nice prosper. So please be good, for goodness’ sake!